Sunday Opinion: Father’s day, gay marriage, and a US-Canada fishing controversy
Morning and Happy Fathers Day. Here’s our weekly weekend wrap-up of the region’s editorial pages.
The Plattsburgh Press Republican celebrates fathers and also celebrates the revolution in the way dads join in the parenting chores.
Now, most fathers share child-rearing duties. They are still the pillars of strength, but they also bend to give kisses. They might reprimand the kids when they misbehave, but they are also there cheering — for both sons and daughters — when they win games and consoling them when they lose. They still demand respect, but they aren’t afraid to cuddle.
In the Glens Falls Post Star, managing editor Ken Tingley doles out praise for state Sen. Roy McDonald, a conservative Republican who announced that he will vote in favor of gay marriage.
Roy McDonald, representing a district where many constituents are so far right they would never make a left turn, announced he was voting for gay marriage.
He did it with classic McDonald flair.
He said he was tired of Republican-Democrat politics. He said they could take this job and shove it if the people didn’t like it. He even dropped an exasperated F-bomb.
The most important thing to remember, and the thing that you should consider most, is he said he was trying to do the right thing.
In the face of adversity, while breaking ranks with his own party and many of his constituents, he said this was a matter of conscience.
Consider the courage that took.
The Adirondack Daiy Enterprise is chiding the Adirondack Council. According to the newspaper’s editorial board, the green group is talking like a legitimate partner in the North Country, but sending rabble-rousy fundraising letters to people outside the region.
Whether or not this double-talk is surprising, many Adirondackers, including us, find it dishonest and, at first blush, offensive. The Council could more effectively protect the environment if it spoke consistently, without changing its story to rile up downstaters on one hand and placate upstaters on the other.
The Watertown Daily Times says something needs to be done to address the incident of a US fisherman nabbed in a confrontational way by Canadian authorities on the St. Lawrence River.
This is not the way that Canadian-American relations have flourished for years along the border. Canadians and Americans are friends and neighbors, not adversaries. We hope that U.S. border officials are not subjecting Canadian boaters and anglers to the same treatment in the name of homeland security.
The Burlington Free Press is scolding city officials for what they describe as woeful mismanagement of the Burlington airport, a facility that a lot of North Country travelers use. The airport is in debt and has launched renovation projects without enough cash to finish them.
Putting the question of responsibility aside, all involved can be pinned with at the least a degree of wonderment.
How in the world could a city-owned enterprise as important as the airport proceed with a major expansion minus a funding method?
This is your good government at work.
So there it is. Have at it, but as always remember to be conversational, civil, and thoughtful. The three In Box virtues.
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One of the hold ups on the marriage equality bill has been the fear that it will open up religions to accusations of discrimination if they refuse to perform same sex marriages. It is my understand though that pastors, priests, rabbis, etc. have always had the prerogative to refuse to marry a couple and send them elsewhere to be married.
For myself I still believe that the government should only recognize ‘civil union’ regardless of who is being joined. As far as government is concerned it is a contract and should be treated as such for all. If a couple wants the union to be recognized as ‘marriage’ they would then seek that recognition from their religion.
Jim – I would add to that that “marriage” is a word that can change meanings over time with no government role. The government grants legal status – civil unions – now. Whether we choose to call any particular arrangement a marriage is more a language issue. Much of the passion in the discussion is about the meaning of a word. The legal stuff – the civil unions – most people are ok with now.
I agree with Peter.
Marriage for many religious traditions has a specific spiritual connotation that a civil contract granted by the state does not.
Take Mormon Fundamentalists who really do believe that polygamous marriage is part of what God wants them to do, do they care that the state does not sanction their polygamous marriages? No; for them the spiritual marriage is far more important than what the government does.
Or consider a Roman Catholic where marriage is a Sacrament of the Church itself. Sacraments can’t be reversed thus you can’t undue a marriage regardless of what the state does or does not do in granting the legal divorce. The Church may grant an annulment that would say that there was something wrong with the practice of the sacrament in the first place but that process is not dependent on what the government does or does not do.
Of course in all of these cases the people as US citizens freely choose to bind themselves to these spiritual practices.
So yeah I think this word marriage is a language issue.
Yes to all of the above and I would add that the Catholic Church will and does refuse to conduct a marriage ceremony if at least one of those looking to get married is a Catholic who has been married and divorced but whose previous marriage has not been annuled by the Church.
Regions have always had to the option to say yes or no to a marriage, whether or not the couple have a marriage license from the state.
This is a bogus issue.
There are significant differences between the legal, financial and health rights granted with a marriage license versus a civil union. Civil unions are inadequate to handle many of the important issues for a couple.
The state version of marriage should be available to any hetero or homo sexual couples subject to the state’s age restrictions. Religious marriages should be available for any couple subject to that religion’s restrictions and prohibitions. If a religion doesn’t want to marry gays, so be it. But there should be an option for a state sanctioned marriage that provides a gay couple full marriage rights.
Or just change the word that the state uses for providing full rights of what it grants. I honestly do think this is a wording issue. If we want to de-couple civil marriage from reproduction, romance, coupling, husband, wife, partners etc, it would be good to do away with the word all together for civil purposes. For example any couple or group of several individuals could enter into a contract to simply take care of each other without any expectation of what that relationship entails outside of the civil benefits currently granted in civil marriage. The word marriage is not really accurate.
Are we all bored enough with discussing the intricacies of marriage that we don’t really care who marries what anymore? I know I am.
There’s a nice rock I know that I’m going out to get married to. Sure it’s a short term proposition for a rock, but it is important to me. We’ll honeymoon at Stonehenge.
We can’t discuss something when we don’t have a societal baseline on what it even means or what it is supposed to do. I have think we could stick with providing equal legal benefit packages to all individuals who want to enter into these contracts. The other option I have heard is to simply get rid of it, on its face it is discriminatory to single people. People have the option of arranging their lives contractually however they want right now; so yeah if you want to have a lawyer draw up an agreement between you and a rock you could do that I think?
Culturally of course there will still be marriages as much as we argue and complain about marriage people love marriage, but without government involved we can proceed without the arguing.
There is value in having a package of legal partnership rights and obligations you get from the state with simple “one-click-shoping”. These would include all the joint ownership stuff, inheritance, heath care proxies, and child-care responsibilities in case of dissolution of the partnership, etc. These rights should be available to any adult pair. If they wish to think of this arrangement as a marriage and/or go through a civil or religious marriage ceremony, that should be nobody else’s business.
If you support marriage equality, Sen. McDonald is courageous and independent. If you oppose it, then he is a traitor and a RINO.
Conversely, if you oppose civil rights, Ruben “George Wallace” Diaz is courageous and independent. If you support them, then he is a traitor and a DINO.
It’s interesting how our perception of events is less a reflection on the actors in question and more to do with ourselves.
I am leaning your way Peter. I am not sure we can limit it to a “pair” but maybe; but there is that value and administrative ease of having that benefit package available I totally agree.
As aside I have relatives who are pretty extreme Christian fundamentalists I like them we just don’t agree on some things. But anyway there is a movement among their group to NOT get a civil marriage at all; but only have a Christian marriage which is not recorded or filed.
as i said in another thread, i agree that getting government out of the marriage business and into the civil union business (for straights and gays alike) is an excellent idea. however, i there’s zero chance that it will ever happen. so for those advancing this proposal, what do you think? do you think this is something that could ever happen? and if you agree with me that it’s a pipe dream, then how else to resolve the gay marriage issue?
Realistically it will be resolved state by state, then at some point it will become a constitutional crisis and the Supreme Court will rule on it directly.